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| Pastor Herman Otten turned 83 today. |
I was accused of leaking to Christian News during my first call in the 1970s. I ran a series of articles on bi-lingual parishes, in the Cleveland Lutheran tabloid. One photo ended up in CN and the pastor yelled, "Did you send that to Otten?" And the pastor was LCA! I only had a vague knowledge of the LCMS-Otten-Seminex battles, but I learned soon enough.
Jack Preus met with Otten often to get elected LCMS synod president, then disavowed him.
Ralph Bohlmann repeated this cycle to become LCMS president.
Al Barry worked through Paul McCain to do the same. I was in Paul McCain's office at the Purple Palace when Otten phoned him. McCain said, "If people found out I was in contact with Otten, I would be fired." McCain bragged about how he gave Barry's materials to Otten before anyone else, so Barry could get instant, fast, positive PR while running for SP. The McCain-Barry administration was quite nasty to the conservatives who installed them in the palace of power. Like RINOs, the LINOs kiss up to the opposition to keep their spoils. Bucky Hellwig (SpenerQuest) said to me, "At least the Bohlmann people were polite."
I went to a meeting or two of the conservatives with Barry. He was clearly antagonistic toward those who elected him in a close election. I saw how his administration used conservatives and tossed them to the curb. In fact, Paul McCain gloated about how they pulled the rug out from under Robert Preus, a few months before giving Robert Preus' widow an award for Preus' work.
At some point I spoke with Herman's son Tim about how the LCMS SPs-in-Waiting kept courting his father and then dumping him.
Let's pause for a Kieschnick interlude. I know he came to New Haven, Missouri to meet Otten. My intuition says his people arranged a division among the conservatives.
Then Matt the Fat came along and spent six hours in New Haven, courting Otten. His secretive campaign manager was Paul McCain, along with help from those who felt set aside or played the martyr role with great drama. The Issues guy turned his one-act play into a huge money-maker.
McCain's role was not clear until Harrison won and Paul was invited back to the Purple Palace for photos, where he reminded some of Adolph strutting around a captured Paris, smirking. Devoid of any academic standing or pastor experience, he settled into his Concordia Publishing House sinecure at royal salary and pumped out pretend blog posts from The Catholic Encyclopedia.
I smelled a rat - or rather a papist - when I read McCain's "scholarly" blog posts. That told me how little LCMS pastors study anything or write anything of merit. Each post obviously took a long time to research and write. And they matched up verbatim, with a few word changes (typical plagiarist) to The Catholic Encyclopedia and a few obscure blogs.
Nobody - but nobody - detected this pattern until I exposed it time after time. Suddenly - poof - the McCain blog rolled up faster than a runaway window shade. No apology from McCain. No apology from his CPH boss. No apology from Matt the Fat.
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| Perfect hair, perfect purple clothes, perfect pose for the papists at the Purple Palace. |
Some Words of Appreciation
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| Liberalism: Its Cause and Cure |
Pastor Otten agreed to selling Liberalism: Its Cause and Cure through Christian News, and struck an agreement with Northwestern Publishing House. The book sold like wildfire. As I recall, McCain reviewed the book quite favorably.
Tim Otten helped especially with
NPH agreed to publish Catholic, Lutheran, Protestant, and then backed out. The Church Growth fanatics who ran WELS did not want to see another book in print, but WELS ended up selling a lot of books (by the case) by ordering them through CN. Kurt Marquart gave a very positive review of CLP, and so did a Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, professor.
Just like the Church Growth clowns, the UOJ Stormtroopers must have their way by silencing anyone who disagrees with their Halle Pietism.
Nevertheless, Christian News has been a vast data source for anyone who cares to read a lot. Started the same year as Walmart, CN has retained the same editor the entire time, quite remarkable by itself.
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| Training UOJ seminarians at Mequon, Mankato, St. Louis, ILT, and Ft. Wayne. The justification by faith rebellion must be stopped, lest it impede the 500th anniversary of the Reformation in 2017. |
